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Theres more to it than just running zone. Zone is a whole bunch of different coverages.

Anyway, Perry, at least from what I could tell, has always been a tampa 2 guy. Giants ran a good amount of it, but it was not their base defense. Their base defense seemed to be cover 3. Why they ran more C3 than Tampa 2 is a couple reasons.

1. Lack of a pass rush
2. Lack of linebackers who can cover.
3. Lack of trusting their safeties (Rolle) deep.
4. Inability to stop the run with the front 7.

C3 allowed them quite a few things.
1. Took away the deep play for the most part
2. Adds an extra defender to the box for run support
3. Adds an extra underneath defender (in the middle of the field anyway, C2 technically has more defenders underneath, but the corners are on the outside not in the middle of the field)
4. Allowed them to play Rolle down in the box where he was less of a liability in coverage and he could help against the run

Why you didnt see much press.

You can not press in C3. Corners have to remain deeper than the WRs.

You dont have to play man to get press. Tampa 2 is notorious for having CBs that absolutely maul receivers at the line.

What the giants need to play more tampa 2.

1. Better pass rush. Tampa 2 the front four HAVE to generate pressure on their own.
2. Corners who can tackle and get off blocks. The corners are the contain players on a run in a C2. Prince improved on this quite a bit during the season, but both Webster and Prince are inconsistent there.
3. Safeties who are disciplined. Rolle is a problem here, he free lances quite a bit, and does not take good angles. Stevie did alright for the most part, but has a lot he can improve upon as well.
4. Linebackers who can anticipate routes, and tackle.

wow, missed this post. well said and explained. i tried summing all that up in a couple sentences...didnt work that great.

I don't know if this has been said yet but with Vick(possibly), RG3 and Tony Romo in our division zone defense is a good thing because in zone the CBs eyes are looking at the QB where in man the CB will have his back to the QB(makes it more difficult for a QB to be able to run and pickup huge chunks of yardage).

I don't know if this has been said yet but with Vick(possibly), RG3 and Tony Romo in our division zone defense is a good thing because in zone the CBs eyes are looking at the QB where in man the CB will have his back to the QB(makes it more difficult for a QB to be able to run and pickup huge chunks of yardage).

1) Keep everything in front of you. If you are running man across the board and bringing extra rushers (or doubling some people) and a swing pass, or run play gets to the second level, you're looking at a big gash in yardage (possibly score).

2) Zone provides a base that's easy to get back to when things are going wrong. Carl Banks remarked one of Sheridan's problems was that when our defense was being abused over and over, we wouldn't get into a base zone as a "reset". We kept reacting to the last play instead of preparing for the current one.

3) Zone follows the philosophy of providing "traffic". Most of your picks are in a zone defense when a QB doesn't see someone playing center field.

4) Zone also follows the philosophy of assigning players "permanent" positions from which you can then add your wrinkles in. In other words, when asked to blitz, you know who/where your back up is.

Generally speaking, when you bring an extra man (or more) on a blitz, your zone becomes too open (not enough coverage) so you go to man coverage to make up the difference. Often you will see a combination of zone and man coverage on almost every defensive play in the NFL. The caveat here is the sell out blitz (when you bring two or more extra rushers) and the zone blitz (where you bring an extra rusher (Safety or LB) and drop a dlineman).

We ran pure zone about 40%(ish) of the time in 2012. When we've done this, its almost always been in a Cover 3 look. Normally we run a Cover 2 shell with single or double man underneath (although our Safeties tend to cheat a lot on that). Very occasionally we've run pure man coverage (we almost never blitz that many players).

We ran a type of zone about 90%+ of our defensive snaps this year.

Hope that helped

awesome post man...dang i haveta kick my own *** for giving u **** all that time before...

I don't know if this has been said yet but with Vick(possibly), RG3 and Tony Romo in our division zone defense is a good thing because in zone the CBs eyes are looking at the QB where in man the CB will have his back to the QB(makes it more difficult for a QB to be able to run and pickup huge chunks of yardage).

It shouldnt be all that surprising that a lot of the top defenses play zone. 49ers play C4 almost all game. Bears and that ridiculous takeaway stat they have going play predominately C2.

Steelers play a ton of C3.

The seahawks are one of the few teams with a top defense that run mostly man coverage. And that is by necessity because of how they setup their front 7. I can link to an article on that if anyone wants to read.

Thanks, this topic can get very confusing once you start throwing in hybrid man/zone coverages, like cover 2 man where the safeties are in a deep zone where the rest of the defense are in man.

or when DC start utilizing reverse c2 concepts where corners and safeties are changing responsibilities (by design) after the snap mid play...when it works, u get turnovers. when it doesnt, u get TDs like the one we gave up vs Buffalo in 2011 that was analyzed here by some of our more x and o savvy posters